LAW AND JUSTICE
• First President to Violate the War Powers Act (Unilaterally Executing American Military Operations in Libya Without Informing Congress In the Required Time Period – Source: Huffington Post)
• First President to Triple the Number of Warrantless Wiretaps of U.S. Citizens (Source: ACLU)
• First President to Sign into Law a Bill That Permits the Government to “Hold Anyone Suspected of Being Associated With Terrorism Indefinitely, Without Any Form of Due Process. No Indictment. No Judge or Jury. No Evidence. No Trial. Just an Indefinite Jail Sentence” (NDAA Bill – Source: Business Insider)
• First President to Refuse to Tell the Public What He Did For Eight (8) Hours After Being Informed That a U.S. Ambassador Was Facing Imminent Death During a Terror Attack (Source: Mediate)
• First President to Lie About the Reason For an Ambassador’s Death, Blaming it on an Internet Video Rather Than What He Knew to be the Case: the Al Qaeda-linked Terror Group Ansar al-Sharia (Source:House Oversight Committee, et. al.)
• First President to Have an Innocent Filmmaker Thrown in Jail After Lying About the Cause for a Deadly Attack on U.S. Diplomats, Using the Filmmaker as a Scapegoat (Source: CNN)
• First President to Use the IRS to “Unfairly Target Political Enemies” as Well as pro-Catholic and pro-Jewish Groups (Source: Sen. Ted Cruz)
• First President to Unlawfully Seize Telephone Records of More than 100 Reporters to Intimidate and/or Bully Them (Source: Associated Press)
• First President to Witness a Single Cabinet Secretary Commit Multiple Hatch Act Violations Without Acting, Speaking Out, Disciplining or Firing That Person (Source: New York Times)
• First President to Systematically Release Detained Illegal Aliens Charged With Homicide Into the U.S. Population (Source: USA Today)
• First President to Release 40,000 Illegal Aliens with Serious and/or Violent Criminal Records Inside the U.S. (Source: Judicial Watch)
• First President to Create Secret Police Units Inside Government Agencies to Block Lawful Investigations by Inspectors General (Source: Associated Press)
• First President to Personally Lobby Senators to Violate Senate Rules and Destroy the Filibuster Through “The Nuclear Option” to Consolidate More Executive Power (Source: Wall Street Journal)
• First President to create his own propaganda news network and “bypass journalists … [having] developed [his] own network of websites, social media and even created an online newscast to dispense favorable information and images” (Source: Associated Press)
• First President to Barricade Open-Air Government Monuments During a Partial Government Shutdown(Source: Rep. Steve Stockman)
• First President to Have His Attorney General Held in Criminal Contempt of Congress For His Efforts to Cover Up Operation Fast and Furious, That Killed Over 300 Individuals (Source: Politico)
• First President to claim Executive Privilege to shield a sitting Attorney General from a Contempt of Congress finding for perjury and withholding evidence from lawful subpoenas (Source: Business Insider)
• First President to Issue Unlawful “Recess-Appointments” Over a Long Weekend – While the U.S. Senate Remained in Session (against the advice of his own Justice Department – Source: United States Court of Appeals)
• First President to Fire an Inspector General of Americorps for Catching One of His Friends in a Corruption Case (Source: Gawker)
• First President to “Order a Secret Amnesty Program that Stopped the Deportations of Illegal Immigrants Across the U.S., Including Those With Criminal Convictions” (Source: DHS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch)
• First President to Sue States for Enforcing Voter ID Requirements, Which Were Previously Ruled Legal by the U.S. Supreme Court (Source: CNN)
• First President to Encourage Racial Discrimination and Intimidation at Polling Places (the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case, Source: Investors Business Daily)
• First President to Refuse to Comply With a House Oversight Committee Subpoena (Source: Heritage Foundation)
• First President to Arbitrarily Declare an Existing Law Unconstitutional and Refuse to Enforce It (Defense of Marriage Act – Source: ABC News)
• First President to Increase Surveillance of American Citizen Under the Patriot Act by 1,000 Percent in Four Years (Source: NBC News)
• First president to appoint a convicted cop killer’s advocate to the Department of Justice (Source: Investor’s Business Daily)
• First Administration to Be Ruled by a Federal Judge as Aiding and Abetting Human Trafficking (Source: Federal District Court Judge Andrew S. Hanen)
• First President to Demand a Company Hand Over $20 Billion to One of His Political Appointees (BP Oil Spill Relief Fund – Source: Fox News)
• First President to Have a Law Signed By an ‘Auto-pen’ Without Being “Present” (Source: The New York Times)

SCANDALS
• First President to publicly announce an enemies list (consisting of his opponents campaign contributors; and to use the instrumentalities of government to punish those on the list – Source: Heritage Foundation)
• First President to Attempt to Block Legally-Required 60-Day Layoff Notices by Government Contractors Due to His Own Cuts to Defense Spending – Because The Notices Would Occur Before the Election. (Source: National Journal)
• First President to Intentionally Disable Credit Card Security Measures (in order to allow over-the-limit donations, foreign contributions and other illegal fundraising measures – Source: Power Line)
• First President to send 80 percent of a $16 billion program (green energy) to his campaign bundlers and contributors, leaving only 20% to those who did not contribute. (Source: Washington Examiner)
• First President to Propose an Executive Order Demanding Companies Disclose Their Political Contributions to Bid on Government Contracts (Source: Wall Street Journal)
• First President to issue an Executive Order implementing a “Racial Justice System”, a system that tries to achieve “racially equivalent outcomes” for crimes (Source: Daily Caller)
• First President to Leak Confidential IRS Tax Records to Groups Aligned Politically With Him for Partisan Advantage (Source: The Hill Newspaper)
• First President to Use the EPA to Punish Political Enemies and Reward Political Allies (Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute)
• First President to Send Millions in Taxpayer Dollars to His Wife’s Former Employer (Source: White House Dossier)
• First President to Openly Use the Department of Justice to Intimidate Political Opponents and Threaten Companies to Donate to His Campaign (Source: Peter Schweizer, Extortion)
• First President to Direct His Census Dept. to Make Up Favorable Employment Data In Run-Up to His Reelection Campaign (Source: New York Post)
• First President to Have His Administration Fund an Organization Tied to the Cop-Killing Terrorist Group, the Weather Underground (Source: National Review)
• First President to have the EPA conduct hazardous experiments on the ill, infirm and elederly to push a radical environmental agenda, in a manner not dissimilar to the Third Reich’s inhuman medical experiments (Source: The EPA Office of the Inspector General).
• First President to be Accused by His Own Party of Ordering the CIA to Spy on Congress (Source:Washington Post)
• First President to allow deadly Ebola disease-ridden patients to enter the U.S., refusing to restrict travel from infected countries like other Western allies (Source: New York Daily News)
• First president to order his EPA to unilaterally overturn a Federal Statute (changing the borders of Wyoming established by an act of Congress, Source: Casper Star-Tribune).
• First president to systematically delay enacting a wide variety of controversial rules until after a presidential election (Source: Washington Post)
• First president to have Politifact designate one of his statements “Lie of the Year” (Source: Politifact)
• First President to Strip Inspectors General of Ability to Investigate Corruption and Fraud in the Federal Government (Source: Washington Times).
• First President to Create a Secret Racial Database of Americans in Order to Determine “Inequities” in Housing, Employment, Banking, etc. (Source: New York Post).
• First President to Intentionally Release Thousands of Illegal Alien Rapists and Child Molesters into the U.S. Instead of Deporting Them (Source: Boston Globe
• First President to be Named by the Associated Press to Have Operated the Least Transparent Administration in History (since the advent of the Freedom of Information Act; Source: Associated Press)
• First President to Have Its Own Watchdogs Report That More Than $125 Billion in Fraudulent/Improper Payments Were Made by the Federal Government (Source: Associated Press)

ECONOMY
• First President to Preside Over a Cut to the Credit Rating of the United States Government (Source: Reuters)
• First President to Bypass Congress and Implement the DREAM Act Through Executive Fiat (Source: Christian Science Monitor)
• First President to Move America Past the Dependency Tipping Point, In Which 51% of Households Now Pay No Income Taxes (Source: Center for Individual Freedom)
• First President to Increase Food Stamp Spending By More Than 100% in Less Than Four Years (Source: Sen. Jeff Sessions)
• First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on ‘Shovel-Ready’ Jobs – and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs (Source: President Obama during an early meeting of his ‘Jobs Council’)
• First President to Threaten Insurance Companies After They Publicly Spoke out on How Obamacare Helped Cause their Rate Increases (Source: The Hill)
• First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters (Source: Wall Street Journal)
• First President to Propose Budgets So Unreasonable That Not a Single Representative From Either Party Would Cast a Vote in Favor (Sources: The Hill, Open Market)
• First President Whose Economic Policies Have the Number of Americans on Disability Exceed the Population of New York (Source: CNS News)
• First President to Sign a Law Requiring All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party (Source: Wall Street Journal)
• First President to Sue States For Enforcing Immigration Laws Passed by Congress (Source: The Arizona Republic newspaper)
• First President to See America Lose Its Status as the World’s Largest Economy (Source: Peterson Institute)
• First President to redistribute $26.5 billion of the taxpayers’ funds to his union supporters in the UAW (Source: Heritage Foundation)
• First President to Threaten an Auto Company (Ford) After It Publicly Mocked Bailouts of GM and Chrysler (Source: Detroit News)
• First President to Run a Record 5 Straight Years of Deficits for the Disability Trust Fund (Source: CNS News)
• First President to Attempt to Bully a Major Manufacturing Company Into Not Opening a Factory in a Right-to-Work State (Boeing’s facility in South Carolina – Source: Wall Street Journal)
• First President Since 1872 to See the U.S. Economy Sink From 1st to 2nd Largest in the World (Source:Financial Times)
• First President to Conceal Food Stamp Data From Public Scrutiny (Source: Judicial Watch: “8th Circuit Says USDA Can’t Keep Hiding Food Stamp Data”)
• First President to Leave the American Middle Class No Longer the World’s Richest (Source: The New York Times)
• First President to Retaliate Against a Rating Agency for Downgrading the United States Debt (Source: Investor’s Business Daily)
• First President to Expand the Regulatory State to an Unprecedented Degree (“New record: Feds issued 56 regs for every new law, 3,659 in 2013”, Source: Washington Examiner)

ENERGY POLICY
• First President to Endanger the Stability of the Electric Grid by Shutting Down Hundreds of Coal-Fired Plants Without Adequate Replacement Technologies (Source: National Electric Reliability Corporation – PDF)
• First President to Have His EPA Repudiated by a Federal Judge for “Overstepping Its Powers” When They Attempted to Shut Down Coal Operations in Appalachia (Source: Huffington Post)
• First President to be Held in Contempt of Court for Illegally Obstructing Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (Source: Politico)

NATIONAL SECURITY AND WORLD AFFAIRS
• First President to Lie Repeatedly to the American People About the Murder of a U.S. Ambassador and Three Other Diplomatic Personnel for Purely Political Reasons, Rewriting a “Talking Points” Memo No Fewer Than a Dozen Times to Avoid Referencing a Pre-Planned Terror Attack (Source: ABC News)
• First President to Openly Defy a Congressional Order Not To Share Sensitive Nuclear Defense Secrets With the Russian Government (Sources: ABC News, Rep. Michael Turner)
• First President to Leak Highly Classified Military and Intelligence Secrets to Hollywood In Order to Promote a Movie That Could Help His Reelection Campaign (Source: Judicial Watch)
• First President to Renounce the Monroe Doctrine of National Security in the Western Hemisphere (Source: Wall Street Journal)
• First Nobel Peace Prize Winner to State “I’m Really Good At Killing People” (Regarding His Drone Strikes) (Source: Business Insider)
• First President to Snub the Vatican by Closing U.S. Embassy (Source: Washington Times, “Obama’s call to close Vatican embassy is ‘slap in the face’ to Roman Catholics”)
• First President to Directly Violate the Law Regarding Prisoner Swaps with the Taliban, Bypassing Congressional Review (Source: The New York Times)
• First President to Invite a Leader of the Terrorist Group the Muslim Brotherhood to a Meeting in the White House (Source: Washington Free Beacon)
• First President to Out a CIA Station Chief in an Active Military Zone (Source: CBS News)
• First President to Negotiate a Deal to Transfer $150 Billion to the World’s Leading State Sponsor of Terrorism (Source: Gatestone Institute)
• First President to Operate His National Security Infrastructure So Incompetently That an Enemy of the United States was Able to Steal the Personnel Records of all Four Million Government Employees (Source: CNN).
• First President to Operate His National Security Infrastructure So Incompetently That His Secretary of State Created Her Own Private Email Servers to Evade Public Open Records Laws (Source: The Verge)
• First President to Terminate America’s Ability to Put a Man into Space (Sources: USA Today, ABC News)
• First President to press for a “treaty giving a U.N. body veto power over the use of our territorial waters and rights to half of all offshore oil revenue” (The Law Of The Sea Treaty, Source: Investors Business Daily)
• First President to force Israel and Saudi Arabia to admit secret diplomacy for the first time in Order to Protect Themselves from the Policies of the United States (Source: Jerusalem Post)
• First President to send $200 million to a terrorist organization (Hamas) after Congress had explicitly frozen the money for fear it would fund attacks against civilians (Sources: American Thinker, The Independent [UK])

MISCELLANIA
• First President to Insert Himself into White House Biographies of Past Presidents (Source: The New York Times).
• First President to Secretly Party With Known Domestic Terrorists (Source: Gawker)
• First President to so inflame racial tensions that the first major league baseball game in U.S. history had to be cancelled due to riots (Source: Baltimore Sun).
• First President to Complete 250 Rounds of Golf in Less Than Seven Years in Office (Source: Mark Knoller CBS News)

But remember: he will not rest until all Americans have jobs, affordable homes, green-energy vehicles, and the environment is repaired, etc., etc., etc.

.
Just hours after the announcement of what the United States characterized as a historic agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, the country’s leading negotiator lashed out at the Obama administration for lying about the details of a tentative framework.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused the Obama administration of misleading the American people and Congress in a fact sheet it released following the culmination of negotiations with the Islamic Republic.

Zarif additionally said Iran would have all nuclear-related sanctions lifted once a final deal is signed and that the country would not be forced to shut down any of its currently operating nuclear installations.

Following a subsequent press conference by Secretary of State John Kerry – and release of a administration fact sheet on Iranian concessions – Zarif lashed out on Twitter over what he dubbed lies.

“The solutions are good for all, as they stand,” he tweeted. “There is no need to spin using ‘fact sheets’ so early on.”

Zarif went on to push back against claims by Kerry that the sanctions relief would be implemented in a phased fashion – and only after Iran verifies that it is not conducting any work on the nuclear weapons front.

Zarif, echoing previous comments, said the United States has promised an immediate termination of sanctions.

“Iran/5+1 Statement: ‘US will cease the application of ALL nuclear-related secondary economic and financial sanctions.’ Is this gradual?” he wrote on Twitter.

He then suggested a correction: “Iran/P5+1 Statement: ‘The EU will TERMINATE the implementation of ALL nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions’. How about this?”

The pushback from Iran’s chief diplomat follows a pattern of similar accusations by senior Iranian political figures after the announcement of previous agreements.

Following the signing of an interim agreement with Iran aimed at scaling back its nuclear work, Iran accused the United States of lying about details of the agreement.

• First President to Violate the War Powers Act (Unilaterally Executing American Military Operations in Libya Without Informing Congress In the Required Time Period – Source: Huffington Post)

• First President to Triple the Number of Warrantless Wiretaps of U.S. Citizens (Source: ACLU)

• First President to Sign into Law a Bill That Permits the Government to “Hold Anyone Suspected of Being Associated With Terrorism Indefinitely, Without Any Form of Due Process. No Indictment. No Judge or Jury. No Evidence. No Trial. Just an Indefinite Jail Sentence” (NDAA Bill – Source: Business Insider)

• First President to Refuse to Tell the Public What He Did For Eight (8) Hours After Being Informed That a U.S. Ambassador Was Facing Imminent Death During a Terror Attack (Source: Mediate)

• First President to Lie About the Reason For an Ambassador’s Death, Blaming it on an Internet Video Rather Than What He Knew to be the Case: the Al Qaeda-linked Terror Group Ansar al-Sharia (Source: House Oversight Committee, et. al.)

• First President to Have an Innocent Filmmaker Thrown in Jail After Lying About the Cause for a Deadly Attack on U.S. Diplomats, Using the Filmmaker as a Scapegoat (Source: CNN)

• First President to Use the IRS to “Unfairly Target Political Enemies” as Well as pro-Catholic and pro-Jewish Groups (Source: Sen. Ted Cruz)

• First President to Unlawfully Seize Telephone Records of More than 100 Reporters to Intimidate and/or Bully Them (Source: Associated Press)

• First President to Witness a Single Cabinet Secretary Commit Multiple Hatch Act Violations Without Acting, Speaking Out, Disciplining or Firing That Person (Source: New York Times)

• First President to Personally Lobby Senators to Violate Senate Rules and Destroy the Filibuster Through “The Nuclear Option” to Consolidate More Executive Power (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to create his own propaganda news network and “bypass journalists… [having] developed [his] own network of websites, social media and even created an online newscast to dispense favorable information and images” (Source: Associated Press)

• First President to Barricade Open-Air Government Monuments During a Partial Government Shutdown (Source: Rep. Steve Stockman)

• First President to Have His Attorney General Held in Criminal Contempt of Congress For His Efforts to Cover Up Operation Fast and Furious, That Killed Over 300 Individuals (Source: Politico)

• First President to claim Executive Privilege to shield a sitting Attorney General from a Contempt of Congress finding for perjury and withholding evidence from lawful subpoenas (Source: Business Insider)

• First President to Issue Unlawful “Recess-Appointments” Over a Long Weekend – While the U.S. Senate Remained in Session (against the advice of his own Justice Department – Source: United States Court of Appeals)

• First President to Fire an Inspector General of Americorps for Catching One of His Friends in a Corruption Case (Source: Gawker)

• First President to “Order a Secret Amnesty Program that Stopped the Deportations of Illegal Immigrants Across the U.S., Including Those With Criminal Convictions” (Source: DHS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch)

• First President to Sue States for Enforcing Voter ID Requirements, Which Were Previously Ruled Legal by the U.S. Supreme Court (Source: CNN)

• First President to Encourage Racial Discrimination and Intimidation at Polling Places (the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case, Source: Investors Business Daily)

• First President to Refuse to Comply With a House Oversight Committee Subpoena (Source: Heritage Foundation)

• First President to Arbitrarily Declare an Existing Law Unconstitutional and Refuse to Enforce It (Defense of Marriage Act – Source: ABC News)

• First President to Increase Surveillance of American Citizen Under the Patriot Act by 1,000 Percent in Four Years (Source: NBC News)

• First President to Demand a Company Hand Over $20 Billion to One of His Political Appointees (BP Oil Spill Relief Fund – Source: Fox News)

• First President to Have a Law Signed By an ‘Auto-pen’ Without Being “Present” (Source: The New York Times)

SCANDALS

• First President to publicly announce an enemies list (consisting of his opponents campaign contributors; and to use the instrumentalities of government to punish those on the list – Source: Heritage Foundation)

• First President to Attempt to Block Legally-Required 60-Day Layoff Notices by Government Contractors Due to His Own Cuts to Defense Spending – Because The Notices Would Occur Before the Election. (Source: National Journal)

• First President to send 80 percent of a $16 billion program (green energy) to his campaign bundlers and contributors, leaving only 20% to those who did not contribute. (Source: Washington Examiner)

• First President to Propose an Executive Order Demanding Companies Disclose Their Political Contributions to Bid on Government Contracts (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to issue an Executive Order implementing a “Racial Justice System”, a system that tries to achieve “racially equivalent outcomes” for crimes (Source: Daily Caller)

• First President to Leak Confidential IRS Tax Records to Groups Aligned Politically With Him for Partisan Advantage (Source: The Hill Newspaper)

• First President to Use the EPA to Punish Political Enemies and Reward Political Allies (Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute)

• First President to Send Millions in Taxpayer Dollars to His Wife’s Former Employer (Source: White House Dossier)

• First President to Openly Use the Department of Justice to Intimidate Political Opponents and Threaten Companies to Donate to His Campaign (Source: Peter Schweizer, Extortion)

• First President to Direct His Census Dept. to Make Up Favorable Employment Data In Run-Up to His Reelection Campaign (Source: New York Post)

• First President to Have His Administration Fund an Organization Tied to the Cop-Killing Terrorist Group, the Weather Underground (Source: National Review)

ECONOMY

• First President to Preside Over a Cut to the Credit Rating of the United States Government (Source: Reuters)

• First President to Bypass Congress and Implement the DREAM Act Through Executive Fiat (Source: Christian Science Monitor)

• First President to Move America Past the Dependency Tipping Point, In Which 51% of Households Now Pay No Income Taxes (Source: Center for Individual Freedom)

• First President to Increase Food Stamp Spending By More Than 100% in Less Than Four Years (Source: Sen. Jeff Sessions)

• First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on ‘Shovel-Ready’ Jobs – and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs (Source: President Obama during an early meeting of his ‘Jobs Council’)

• First President to Threaten Insurance Companies After They Publicly Spoke out on How Obamacare Helped Cause their Rate Increases (Source: The Hill)

• First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to Propose Budgets So Unreasonable That Not a Single Representative From Either Party Would Cast a Vote in Favor (Sources: The Hill, Open Market)

• First President Whose Economic Policies Have the Number of Americans on Disability Exceed the Population of New York (Source: CNS News)

• First President to Sign a Law Requiring All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to Sue States For Enforcing Immigration Laws Passed by Congress (Source: The Arizona Republic newspaper)

• First President to See America Lose Its Status as the World’s Largest Economy (Source: Peterson Institute)

• First President to redistribute $26.5 billion of the taxpayers’ funds to his union supporters in the UAW (Source: Heritage Foundation)

• First President to Threaten an Auto Company (Ford) After It Publicly Mocked Bailouts of GM and Chrysler (Source: Detroit News)

• First President to Run a Record 5 Straight Years of Deficits for the Disability Trust Fund (Source: CNS)

• First President to Attempt to Bully a Major Manufacturing Company Into Not Opening a Factory in a Right-to-Work State (Boeing’s facility in South Carolina – Source: Wall Street Journal)

ENERGY POLICY

• First President to Endanger the Stability of the Electric Grid by Shutting Down Hundreds of Coal-Fired Plants Without Adequate Replacement Technologies (Source: National Electric Reliability Corporation – PDF)

• First President to Have His EPA Repudiated by a Federal Judge for “Overstepping Its Powers” When They Attempted to Shut Down Coal Operations in Appalachia (Source: Huffington Post)

• First President to be Held in Contempt of Court for Illegally Obstructing Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (Source: Politico)

NATIONAL SECURITY AND WORLD AFFAIRS

• First President to Lie Repeatedly to the American People About the Murder of a U.S. Ambassador and Three Other Diplomatic Personnel for Purely Political Reasons, Rewriting a “Talking Points” Memo No Fewer Than a Dozen Times to Avoid Referencing a Pre-Planned Terror Attack (Source: ABC News)

• First President to Openly Defy a Congressional Order Not To Share Sensitive Nuclear Defense Secrets With the Russian Government (Sources: ABC News, Rep. Michael Turner)

• First President to Leak Highly Classified Military and Intelligence Secrets to Hollywood In Order to Promote a Movie That Could Help His Reelection Campaign (Source: Judicial Watch)

• First President to Renounce the Monroe Doctrine of National Security in the Western Hemisphere (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First Nobel Peace Prize Winner to State “I’m Really Good At Killing People” (Regarding His Drone Strikes) (Source: Business Insider)

• First President to Snub the Vatican by Closing U.S. Embassy (Source: Washington Times, “Obama’s call to close Vatican embassy is ‘slap in the face’ to Roman Catholics”)

• First President to Terminate America’s Ability to Put a Man into Space (Sources: USA Today, ABC News)

• First President to press for a “treaty giving a U.N. body veto power over the use of our territorial waters and rights to half of all offshore oil revenue” (The Law Of The Sea Treaty, Source: Investors Business Daily)

• First President to send $200 million to a terrorist organization (Hamas) after Congress had explicitly frozen the money for fear it would fund attacks against civilians (Sources: American Thinker, The Independent [UK])

MISCELLANIA

• First President to Insert Himself into White House Biographies of Past Presidents (Source: The New York Times).

• First President to Complete 150 Rounds of Golf in Less Than Five Years in Office (Source: Yahoo! News)

But remember: he will not rest until all Americans have jobs, affordable homes, green-energy vehicles, and the environment is repaired, etc., etc., etc.

As part of a Mothers’ Day weekend defense of his signature legislative accomplishment, President Obama claimed that the law represented the “largest health care tax cut for working families and small businesses in our history.“

.……….

His argument was a Hail-Mary effort to redesignate subsidies for individuals to purchase health insurance on government-run exchanges as a “tax cut.” But according to the Congressional Budget Office, these subsidies actually qualify as more than $1 trillion in “Exchange Subsidies and Related SPENDING.” (Emphasis mine.)

Far from being a historic tax cut, Obamacare actually qualifies as one of the largest tax increases in history. It contains roughly $1 trillion in taxes – on insurance plans, medical devices and investment income. And many of the taxes will end up falling on the middle class. The law’s individual mandate, which the Obama administration successful argued was a tax before the U.S. Supreme Court, is projected to hit nearly 5 million Americans with incomes less than $60,000 by 2016.

As president, Barack Obama has made a habit of bypassing or ignoring constitutional limitations on his power, a panel of experts told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Obama’s claiming of executive privilege during the Fast and Furious debacle has already faded from the headlines, and it may be hard to remember the weight of the outrage expressed at the beginning of the year, when Obama made a handful of unilateral “recess” appointments, opting to bypass a Senate that wasn’t actually in recess.

But these incidents and a number of others were strung together at the hearing as proof of a dangerous trend in the administration.

……..

“The administration has repeatedly put its partisan agenda above the rule of law,” committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said. “In doing so, it has eroded the constitutional and legal foundation that have kept America prosperous and free for over 200 years.”

Smith enumerated other instances of alleged presidential overreach, including Obama’s decision to stop enforcing parts of U.S. immigration law to allow illegal aliens to stay in the country legally if they meet certain criteria and waivers issued to the No Child Left Behind Act and welfare reform bill that Smith said “effectively rewrite the law instead of enforcing it.”

“Just because you don’t like a law, doesn’t mean you can ignore it,” Smith said. “Many people have gone to jail for doing just that.”

He did not call for legal action against the president of the sort that some legislators took when Obama took military action in Libya without consulting Congress, but let Obama’s record speak for itself as examples of presidential overreach that should not become future presidential habit.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) a noted constitutional scholar in Congress and a witness on the panel, told the committee that Obama’s abuse of power by making recess appointments while the Senate was not actually in recess was a historic first.

“No president has ever made a unilateral appointment during an adjournment lasting less than three days,” he said.

Lee also noted that executive privilege had been misused in the case of Fast and Furious, Congress pressed for full documentation of the operation following the discovery that a previous Department of Justice letter about the matter had been intentionally misleading and inaccurate.

“The privilege disappears altogether whenever there is any reason to believe government misconduct has occurred,” Lee said.

Lori Windham, senior counsel to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, testified that the Obama administration’s decision to require religious organizations to supply contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees or pay a fine was part of a longer tradition by Obama of dismissing religious concerns. Arguing last year in favor of churches and other houses of worship choosing clergy according to their own religious principles without interference in the Supreme Court case Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, she said, “I was not alone in my shock when the Obama Administration’s lawyers opposed our position by arguing that churches are no different than bowling clubs, and that our First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom does not protect religious organizations.”

Ultimately, the court ruled unanimously in favor of religious groups.

Windham said the administration’s actions set a dangerous precedent that extended beyond religious practice.

“If the government can trample First Amendment freedoms, then none of our fundamental rights are secure,” she said.

Ultimately, Lee said even those who support Obama should understand the need for accountability and challenges to his actions when he oversteps his constitutional bounds.

“These things happen not because we’ve had bad men as presidents. We haven’t,” he said. “We’ve had good men, and that includes our current president. These things happen because presidents are human beings.”

The system, he said, includes checks and balances for a reason.

“We cannot ignore abuses of power. Because if we ignore them, they become part of established practice and tradition,” he said.

Voters delivered an epic victory to Republicans and a stinging defeat to Democrats in midterm elections Tuesday, handing the GOP an avalanche of pickups in the House the likes of which has not been seen in more than half a century.

Republicans were on their way to gaining around 60 seats in the House, and had made huge advances in the Senate as well. GOP candidates also won big in governors races and state legislatures across the country.

The consolations for Democrats were few: they retained control of the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held on to his Nevada Senate seat, and Democrats won a few House races that were thought to be in danger.

The House currently has 255 Democrats and 178 Republicans. The new reality will be a Republican majority of between 236 and 240, and a Democratic minority below 200.

The GOP House gains were the biggest swing for either party since 1948, when Democrats gained 75 seats on the back of President Truman’s campaign against a “do-nothing” GOP Congress.

The last time such a large swing occurred in a midterm election was in 1938, when Democrats lost 72 seats to Republicans in the middle of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt s second term, as voters lost confidence in the New Deal.

In the Senate Tuesday, Republicans picked up seats in Arkansas, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois and Pennsylvania. They were on pace to win in North Dakota as well, and the Colorado race was too close to call, with Republican Ken Buck holding a lead of a few hundred votes.

The total pickup for the GOP in the Senate was set to be between 6 and 8 seats, depending on the outcomes in Colorado, Washington and Alaska. The latter two may not be decided for days.

Republicans also won a key gubernatorial race in Ohio and looked likely to win in Florida, both contests that President Obama and Democrats badly wanted to win. And 17 separate state chambers flipped from Democrat to Republican, in the latest count.

Republicans, however, said they were not celebrating.

“We’ve got real work to do, and frankly this is not a time for celebration, not when one out of 10 of our fellow citizens is out of work,” said John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who is set to become the next Speaker of the House.

Boehner said “our new majority will be prepared to do things differently,” saying they will cut spending instead of increasing it, which will be a much easier promise to make than it will be to fulfill.

And Boehner sought immediately to prevent Obama and the White House from sticking the new House Republican majority with full responsibility for the ship of state.

“We must remember it’s the president who sets the agenda,” Boehner said. The American people have sent an unmistakable message to him tonight, and that message is, ‘Change course.'”

Obama called Boehner around midnight “to congratulate him,” according to Boehner’s office.

“They had a brief but pleasant conversation. Leader Boehner said he’s always been straightforward and honest with the president in the past, and said that’s the way he’ll continue to be with the president in the future. They discussed working together to focus on the top priorities of the American people, which Boehner has identified as creating jobs and cutting spending,” Boehner’s office said.

Republican legislators have captured at least 16 chambers of state governments, electoral victories which will prove crucial to the redistricting efforts next year that will draw the maps for Congressional races over the next decade.

In New Hampshire, North Carolina, Alabama and Wisconsin, Republicans captured both the state House and Senate.

Oklahoma is to become the first state in the U.S. to ban Islamic sharia law. That’s the result of a voter initiative that passed by a heavy majority in the midterm election on Tuesday night.

State Question 755 amends the Oklahoma constitution to forbid courts in Oklahoma from considering sharia law or international law in reaching their decisions. More than 70% of voters approved the measure.

The dollar is in danger of losing 20% of its value over the next few years if the Federal Reserve continues unconventional monetary easing, Bill Gross, the manager of the world’s largest mutual fund, said on Monday.

“I think a 20% decline in the dollar is possible,” Gross said, adding the pace of the decline was also an important consideration for investors.

Terrorists unleashed a wave of deadly attacks in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 113 people in Shiite neighborhoods in an apparent bid to provoke a new sectarian war in the country.

Seventeen car bombs and other blasts shook the city at sunset in one of the bloodiest days this year. The coordinated attacks came just 48 hours after 58 people were killed after armed men seized a Baghdad church.

French media are describing as a “miracle” the unscathed survival of an 18-month-old girl who fell from a sixth-floor apartment.

The girl was left unattended by her parents when she somehow fell, then bounced off the awning of a cafe below. She had a further stroke of luck when a passing doctor saw her fall and caught her before she hit the ground, witnesses were quoted as saying.

A Swedish man was acquitted of drink driving after a court said it couldn’t rule out the possibility he was sleepwalking. The 51-year-old man, who was not identified, had a blood alcohol level nearly 10 times the country’s legal limit.

The man said he awoke late one evening in the driver’s seat of his car, which had catapulted into a ditch in Karlskrona.

Police say a bank robber forgot to set up a getaway ride, so he offered $1,000 to people on the street for a lift after the heist.

Capitola police said a man in his 40s or 50s entered a bank at 11:40 a.m. on Saturday and ordered $20 and $100 bills from the teller. Police said the man then jumped onto the counter, pushed the teller and grabbed money from the till.

A 42-year-old Vancouver woman visiting her terminally ill son at a Pittsburgh hospital was jailed after she allegedly disconnected his intravenous line feeding him sedatives and injected herself with with the drug.

Karen Remsing was visiting her son at UPMC Children’s Hospital when she disconnected his sedative line and began filling hypodermic needles out of the tube.